[Now Official] More ntl speed changes

[DeadKenny]

Originally Posted by jtwn

If thats the case, ntl must be the best bb provider in the country.

Speed isn't everything an ISP must provide you know. There are many things people are forgetting about NTL and why so many of us are jumping ship and happy to steer well clear of NTL no matter what they offer.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by DeadKenny

Speed isn't everything an ISP must provide you know. There are many things people are forgetting about NTL and why so many of us are jumping ship and happy to steer well clear of NTL no matter what they offer.

Likewise for some people it's as smooth a ride as you like with service at very least acceptable and at best brilliant. BTW I like the speed you're on with PN Speed does sell!

At the end of the day while there are a fair few unhappy people there must be hundreds of thousands of happy bunnies, otherwise ntl wouldn't be in business?

Regarding this issue of £25 admin fee.

Again I would point out to people that BT charge similar for service regrades (which are usually a reconfiguration job), also that no-one is forcing you to take these upgraded services. ADSL customers have to pay BT a migration fee. For a total of next to no work, just some ATM config changes.

The £25 is IMHO no punishment to current users, to provision new customers costs the same be it at 64k or 3Mbit, to move customers over will require work.

If you don't want it don't take it.

Personally I think the fastest widely available bb service in the UK for a sub-40 quid a month price point is an absolute bloody steal. I'm rather irritated I can't get it to be honest as it'll be a very long time before BT offer anything similar - last I heard there were no plans at all.

[sav112]

Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m interested to read the news speed bands, I was delighted with my free upgrade to 300K which made my BB experience a lot better. 1MB for £17.99 sounds good to me even with that 5GB cap but then again I only browse the net , e-mail, and play the odd game so I should be fine.



I might not upgrade right off as £25 sounds a bit high to administer itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s another £25 Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢d have to find over everything else and Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m in no rush. Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m the poor fool who paid £50 installation cost for my BB then the next month it was free.

Originally Posted by Bill C

You are joking i hope. Whats wrong with a one of payment of £25.00 But you dont have to pay it. Just dont have the upgrade. Next you will want blood from a stone and expect ntl to pay for it.

Ok, but assume for a moment that someone was stubborn enough to refuse to pay the £25 fee, that would mean that NTL would still need to retain the cable modem configs for the 1.5Mb service as that one would no longer exist. Are they really going to let someone stay on a service tier that would effectively no longer exist. They couldn't actually force this on someone who is still within their 12 month contract.

It strikes me that in typical NTL fashion this hasn`t been thought through particularly well. As pointed out earlier, I could just downgrade a tier, pay less money and still get a speed increase to offset against the costs of then going back up to 3Mb.

With the upgrade from 1Mb to 1.5Mb this was simply making a change in a config file and then the new cable modem picking it up the next time it is rebooted. If the administration fee is valid for the new upgrades it would have been valid then, but they didn`t charge it before. All NTL are doing is tweaking a config file that is sitting on a server, I rebooted the cable modem myself to pick it up, so now work was done specifically for me.

As NTL claim they have 1,000,000 broadband customers now, this seems to me nothing than a cheap trick to try and rake in a quick £25mill ion.

[cjmillsnun]

Originally Posted by Scooby

not sure why you are unhapy abt having to pay £25 they could of simply increased the price and made the money that way. Simple really if you don't want to pay don't change!!

Hang on why should I pay for 750k (at 24.99 per month) when a new customer gets 2mb FOR THE SAME PRICE! This is complete $h1te.

Yes they could have increased the prices, but people would leave ntl like rats leaving a sinking ship.

Come on ntl, it would cost virtually nothing to treat your LOYAL customers who have been with you for years!

[andrew_wallasey]

I cant see people have 2048/128 and 1024/64. I would assume they will increase the upload across the board but would not be sure as I have been told the download is not what kripples the network its the uploading.

[andrew_wallasey]

Originally Posted by dr wadd

Ok, but assume for a moment that someone was stubborn enough to refuse to pay the £25 fee, that would mean that NTL would still need to retain the cable modem configs for the 1.5Mb service as that one would no longer exist. Are they really going to let someone stay on a service tier that would effectively no longer exist. They couldn't actually force this on someone who is still within their 12 month contract.

It strikes me that in typical NTL fashion this hasn`t been thought through particularly well. As pointed out earlier, I could just downgrade a tier, pay less money and still get a speed increase to offset against the costs of then going back up to 3Mb.

With the upgrade from 1Mb to 1.5Mb this was simply making a change in a config file and then the new cable modem picking it up the next time it is rebooted. If the administration fee is valid for the new upgrades it would have been valid then, but they didn`t charge it before. All NTL are doing is tweaking a config file that is sitting on a server, I rebooted the cable modem myself to pick it up, so now work was done specifically for me.

As NTL claim they have 1,000,000 broadband customers now, this seems to me nothing than a cheap trick to try and rake in a quick £25mill ion.

I don't know anything about the config files but I seriously doubt it is just a quick tweak. Also, what about the costs in upgrading the network to suppose the new speed. If you are currently on 1.5mbps, 25quid is littler over 1/2 a months subscription charge for double the speed. Stop being a tight arse.

They are not forcing you to change the speed but I would rather pay 25quid and have the speed upgrade or downgrade and save the extra money but I will be surfing at 3mbit from the new year

[ray_uk]

I just found this on driverheaven, by the way whats Up with this USAGE ALLOWANCE , that sounds a lot like metering to me. Im definitely going to need more then 40gb a month.

*£17.99 per month: ntl 1Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 5GB) will offer super speed broadband for 60p a day. For the same price BT Broadband offers a basic 512K service with 1GB usage allowance.

*£24.99 per month: ntl 2Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 30GB) will operate at a stunning speed, but at a price thatâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s in line with most 512K ADSL services. For the same price BT Broadband offers a 512K service with 15GB usage allowance

*£37.99 per month: ntl 3Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 40GB) will operate at up to 60 times faster than dial up services. BT and Wanadoo do not provide 2Mb or 3Mb services.

My apologies if any of this has already been posted.

[BBKing]

With the upgrade from 1Mb to 1.5Mb this was simply making a change in a config file and then the new cable modem picking it up the next time it is rebooted.

It was a lot more involved than that, actually - there's more than one config file, there's more than one server, there's some areas of the country delayed, there's UBR configs to be amended, there's capacity monitoring, there's checking the work to make sure you haven't made a mistake. Was a big big job.

[andrew_wallasey]

Originally Posted by ray_uk

I just found this on driverheaven, by the way whats Up with this USAGE ALLOWANCE , that sounds a lot like metering to me. Im definitely going to need more then 40gb a month.

*£17.99 per month: ntl 1Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 5GB) will offer super speed broadband for 60p a day. For the same price BT Broadband offers a basic 512K service with 1GB usage allowance.

*£24.99 per month: ntl 2Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 30GB) will operate at a stunning speed, but at a price thatâ₠¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s in line with most 512K ADSL services. For the same price BT Broadband offers a 512K service with 15GB usage allowance

*£37.99 per month: ntl 3Mb Broadband (monthly usage allowance 40GB) will operate at up to 60 times faster than dial up services. BT and Wanadoo do not provide 2Mb or 3Mb services.

My apologies if any of this has already been posted.

Well if it is you will have to pay a per gb amount extra wont you I don't think it will be strict though.

[andrew_wallasey]

Originally Posted by BBKing

It was a lot more involved than that, actually - there's more than one config file, there's more than one server, there's some areas of the country delayed, there's UBR configs to be amended, there's capacity monitoring, there's checking the work to make sure you haven't made a mistake. Was a big big job.

Didn't think it was easy and to have to do it all over again bet ya gutted, lol.

[Graham F]

Originally Posted by cjmillsnun

Hang on why should I pay for 750k (at 24.99 per month) when a new customer gets 2mb FOR THE SAME PRICE! This is complete $h1te.

Yes they could have increased the prices, but people would leave ntl like rats leaving a sinking ship.

Come on ntl, it would cost virtually nothing to treat your LOYAL customers who have been with you for years!

Your jumping the gun a bit there as you don't know all the details of if this is available to new customers etc....

Originally Posted by ray_uk

I just found this on driverheaven, by the way whats Up with this USAGE ALLOWANCE [/b], that sounds a lot like metering to me. Im definitely going to need more then 40gb a month.

Here's hopeing your not on the same ubr as me

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Nor

What benefit is there in having download speed which is twice as fast if you can only download the same amount mate. Its like racing in between red traffic lights.

Not quite, the red traffic lights go green and you get to your destination quicker with a faster connection, click on a link and it responds, no waiting.

Originally Posted by andrew_wallasey

I don't know anything about the config files but I seriously doubt it is just a quick tweak. Also, what about the costs in upgrading the network to suppose the new speed. If you are currently on 1.5mbps, 25quid is littler over 1/2 a months subscription charge for double the speed. Stop being a tight arse.

This has got nothing to do with being a "tight arse", as you so eloquently put it. It is entirely to do with a seemingly arbitrary administration fee, if they want to charge me they are going to have to justify the charge. And yes, it will just be a quick tweak to the config files. It is trivially simple to hack the config files on the cable modems if you want to give yourself a speed upgrade as it is, if you can do it (albeit illegally I`ll hasten to add) with simple tools downloaded from the net, why is it going to be that much hard for NTL staff to do it?

Originally Posted by andrew_wallasey

They are not forcing you to change the speed but I would rather pay 25quid and have the speed upgrade or downgrade and save the extra money but I will be surfing at 3mbit from the new year

It still remains to be seen whether this ends up being forced on customers or not. Given the trouble I foresee ahead of attempting to juggle customers who have and haven`t upgraded, as this will result in customers on the same tier but at different speeds and customers on the same speed but at different tiers, I strongly suspect that this will end up becoming mandatory.